Hitachi to re-assess under-performing Gold Partners

Hitachi Data Systems is set to re-assess several Gold partners in an effort to weed out resellers that don’t “step up”. Those found lacking will be asked to commit or drop to a lower tier.

Hitachi has four tiers of resellers with Platinum at the top and Gold coming second followed by Silver and Bronze. The top two tiers have between 10-12 partners, with around 120 partners across all levels.

“It’s not about culling back,” Hitachi Data Systems channel director, Wendy Watkinson, said. “There’s not a lot of partners that aren’t stepping up… it’s just you’ll find that people move around their business models and what was working 12 months ago might not work today.

“We’re looking at our Gold level partners and seeing if they’re really on board with where we sit,” she said. “We’re then going to the partners that aren’t stepping up to the plate as much as others and having serious conversations about either stepping up or moving them to silver potentially.”

Watkinson said the move was part of an effort to strengthen the channel.

She said 55 per cent of her business came from indirect sales through the channel and that future growth would depend on better reseller revenues.

“We need to make sure our partners are on board and we keep them happy, focussed and selling our solutions,” Watkinson said. “If there are any more partners coming on board in the top tiers it’s probably going to be very niche-focussed.

“I don’t want to bring on more partners than what we have today. We can’t resource them if we bring on too many more… we’ve got to keep that focus tight.”

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